Got any good tyranny stories?

There are far too many of the bad ones. Dr. Evil wants to blow up the world; or Anakin Skywalker is turning to the dark side (I never could tell why -- he's angry that his mother was killed, and that makes him evil?). I suspect Nazis were more complex than they get portrayed. But I'm thinking of how to portray people like the Maya. Yearly rituals of torturing people for a week or two before sacrificing them to the gods.

I know there's a component of making excuses, in our world. In Rwanda, a woman explained that she turned two orphans over to death squads because their parents had been killed and it wouldn't be humane to let them live. Terri Schiavo got to experience the "euphoria" of dying of thirst. But I don't think Nazis made excuses. They were too busy being RIGHT. (Maybe I'm wrong. In Mein Kampf, Hitler said Germans should oppose Communism because it was too brutal, and should oppose it by being just as brutal. Sounds like an excuse to me.)

I can't think of any good fiction that shows tyranny from the tyrant's viewpoint, or his supporters. Anybody else think of any?

Well, I have to admit, I never thought of Star Wars as a tyranny story... Okay, I'll cave. Here's the deal with Anakin Skywalker: it's not that he's angry, or that he's in love, or that he feels any specific emotion at all. At least, not directly. The problem is, he feels emotions, and very strong emotions, and the Jedi kind of frown on the whole emotion thing. You're allowed to feel them, but you're supposed to feel them and then release them into the Force, not bottle them up inside. Anakin didn't get that, and the bottling thing coupled with impatience, arrogance, and immense power got to him after a while. Palpatine just knew how to manipulate him so that he would turn to the Dark Side instead of channeling his passion toward the Light.

The Nazi Party was more of a religious movement than a political one. Nazis would regularly organize massive rituals involving troop displays timed to match astrological events. German townfolk were required to line streets and stand in silent vigil as the troops passed bearing symbols of power. The Nazi symbol itself is a religious symbol representing Thor's hammer. Excuses abound.

oh, and Anakin was drawn to the power of the darkside through a sense of helplessness in the face of an increasingly unjust and chaotic universe. That his mother (whom he saw as the ultimate innocent) was killed in such a brutal and pointless fashion was, to his mind, proof. The dark side offered the power to make things right. But with each lean toward it Anakin found it easier and easier to justify exactly the same sort of brutality he had originally been dedicated to stopping. It's a whole "paved with good intentions" kind of thing.

Josh Leone

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*twitch* Must... defend... Star Wars... *twitchtwitchtwitch*

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Hahahahahahahaha! Oh, Jaina, I might have known you'd say something like that. That comment highly amused me. :P

All the Enderverse books follow up on this theme, and most of OSC's fiction deals with stories of people that do quite terrible things for the causes they believe to be right.

How about the much lighter fiction of Bujold? Her main character is a tin-pot dictator who is pathologically driven to be in charge due to his own physical limitations. He's utterly demented in his need to be the one giving orders, and he commits real crimes that put real blood on his hands to get and keep the power he needs. But you love him for it, even though a sane person would run far away from such an one.

Stories thrive on conflict, on beating down the "bad guys" and forcing them to do what the "hero" wants. Every story could be told from the other side (and a good many are). One can see Anakin's point in turning to the dark side. The Jedi are so busy being purer and better than everyone else that they can never be bothered to actually help out the individuals who are most oppressed. Lanik shouts his frustration at the Schwartzes, who do not kill rock or plant or animal, because they won't help any of the people that need to kill in order to survive.

Look at God, the ultimate tyrant. The number one reason for atheism is because people think that God should be using His power for something else, like making everyone be good all the time or at least making sure that sin doesn't actually hurt anyone, least of all the sinner. How could anyone have all that power and not use it the way I want? It isn't fair, it isn't right, I refuse to believe in such a God.

How about Winston from 1984? He has no idea whether things were actually better in the past. He just wants to believe it because he hates the Party and the restrictions they force on his life. He'll do anything, lie and steal and sabotage and murder little children, he promises to commit any crime whatsoever if it will bring about the downfall of the current system. Does he go out and put it to a vote, ask everyone else whether they want the system overthrown? Hell no, he knows that most of them are content with things the way they are, and many are totally committed to the very system he'd do anything to destroy.

But their opinions don't matter. He's sure the system should be overthrown. And we agree with him, because the book is from his POV (and because totalitarianism is utterly evil and must be destroyed by any means necessary, including fantasies of rape and murder ).

Don't I believe that some things are really right and others really wrong? Don't I think that some people are worse than others? Of course...because I'm a tyrant too. If you become obsessed with never putting someone else down, then ultimately reality will take you where logic takes the Laws of Robotics. To exist is to be in conflict with others. You can find harmony with a few, but harmony with everyone isn't possible. The attempt will only create more oppression.

Everything is relative to the observer.

OK, how about someone who designs a genocide?

Someone who's up for human sacrifice?

The POV characters I can think of in such situations are the dissidents, that is, those that are surviving the concentration camp, or working for the underground.

Did you mean the Swastika?

If so the Swastika came from Madame Blavatsky's trips to Tibet. Fritz began publishing and selling amulets with the swastika before WW1. Publishing them in his magazines and newsletters. Many WW1 germanic soldiers wore swastikas as good luck charms. When Germany lost ww1 Fritz was quick to libel Jews as the cause of their defeat.

The "ss" in the SS were runes from germanic-norse antiquity as was the dept of agriculture, athletics, architecture, eduction etc...

But you are right that the Germans were whipped into a fury based on these psuedo mythic religions of racial souls (each race had a different collective soul- and that ultimately the best race would create a "superman" Interestingly enough a couple of Jewish Americans created Superman as a comic in almost an insult to the germans. The Russians also entered the superman race under Stalin.)

The average german though was caught up and lost in the chaos. Even the german army was at odds many times with Hitler and the SS. Not everyone wanted to kill the jews- but just like in the USA today radical minorities can control even a disagreeing majority. Just by shear energy and relentless.

Concerning the Mayans:

A great book I forget the Author but the title was "Aztec" told of the last days of the aztecs when he spanish arrived and how they justified the aztec warfare and human sacrifices.

In a tyranny system the participants almost always describe themselves as free. the serf systems thruout the world lasted in some cases almost a thousand years- while democratic govt's only last in most cases less than two hundred years. Some less than two elections. Thats because monsters always rise to the top and assume power. Hitler was elected.

Not that they were the same culture.

But the Mayans and Aztecs had much more in common in religious and govermental structure than the Sioux and the Pilgrims.

Aztec and Maya: I recently read a book about their rituals, can't remember the author. He pointed out that we should understand that putting people through a week or two of torture and mutilation before killing them, for a yearly festival, was just part of their culture and the victims probably understood that it was not so bad. On the other hand, Christianity is, at its very core, about murdering Jews, and is absolutely hateful.

So I guess scapegoating is another way to defend tyranny, and it's certainly used a lot. I dont' find it so interesting, but if that's the way people do it, I'll need to write that, to be realistic. I wonder who stable societies use as a scapegoat -- societies like ancient Egypt, or ancient China? Or really ancient Greece, when they used to sacrifice an Adonis each year? Or maybe they were really terrified the gods would hurt them if they didn't, so that was their excuse.

Where do you get the idea that Christianity at it's core is about murdering jews?

Professional or theocratic churches is not christianity no more than democrats are for slavery.

In the middle ages and even today the masses who called themselves christian were illiterate, superstitious xenaphobes and the church leaders were greedy grasping overlords. Yet the educated literate christians were the first sent to the burning fires. I'd advise you to read Fox's Book of Martyrs.

Read my paragraph again: "[Gillette] pointed out that we should understand that putting people through a week or two of torture and mutilation before killing them, for a yearly festival, was just part of their culture and the victims probably understood that it was not so bad. On the other hand, Christianity is, at its very core, about murdering Jews, and is absolutely hateful."

Gillette also glorified the "acceptance of cruelty" as a way to become "authentic human beings," and that "cold indifference to the ruination of others was a necessary lesson."

Looking that up helped me somewhat. I can't understand how someone can mean these words, but at least I know what some of the words are.

Bio of a Space Tyrant series, by Piers Anthony.

> OK, how about someone who designs a
> genocide?

What I stated was for information sake not opinion. If you research the subject (avoiding the pop-culture books and going for the transcripted accounts from witnesses on both sides) you will find account after account that says the same thing. Also, I'm not by any means saying that all german non-nazi soldiers were just innocent pawns. NOT AT ALL. Many were as guilty as any nazi. Particularly those who actually served at the camps. But a significant number of the front line troops were unaware of the horrors going on.

My view of the holocaust is, I assume, the same as most people's. It was horrible. It never should have happened. Those responsible deserved to be punished. The lesson of it should never be forgotten. And we should make every effort to never let it happen again.

Now I'm going to bow out of this conversation since I'm here to talk about writing, not politics. And this all seems too much like a poli-sci course.

My writing group has been instructed to keep in mind that everyone, including the villain characters, should have shades of gray to their personalities. No one is pure evil, or pure goodness. It is the dark streaks in a basically good person that makes him/her interesting to read about (ie, Ender, Alvin Maker, Paul Atreides), and it is the good woven into the evil acts that makes the tyrant a more interesting character.

Frank Herbert was great at portraying tyrants who became tyrannical because of circumstances. Marion Zimmer Bradley was, too. I would venture a guess that most tyrants are only tyrants from a particular point of view. If one could see the world through their eyes, one would see the justification. Very few people do things just because they relish evil acts.

At the risk of triggering any political-sociological tirades, from Hitler's standpoint he was doing God's work to purify the human race into what it was originally meant to be. Osama Bin Laden is a hero to some people because he is trying to overthrow the oppressive government that he feels is trying to destroy his people and his way of life. Those of us who have been on the opposite end of their acts may disagree with those viewpoints.

Many aboriginal cultures do things with the intention of bettering the lives of all the people. If one person is sacrificed, will it save the whole nation from drought, or famine? Some people feel that destroying old growth trees and driving spotted owls to extinction is a worthwhile sacrifice so timber coporations can make money and pay people salaries for jobs. To Col. Custer, the Indians were ruthless enemies to be exterminated. But to Sitting Bull, Custer was destroying innocent women, children, and families and their way of life. Who was the villain? It's hard to say.

I suppose the point I am trying to make is, every viewpoint can be seen as right - or wrong - depending on where you stand and what you consider worth saving and what you don't.

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As a reader, I would want you to explain to me WHY the Mayans did what they did... what were the background reasons? Give me the justifications for their acts, then let me decide if they acted wrongly or not.

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I would never defend moral relativism. In reference to this discussion, moral relativists occupy an interesting place because of their implacable and relentless "soft" tyranny. But aside from that, being a moral relativist is just plain stupid.

Let's say that you and I are having an argument about, say, whether there are such things as irrational numbers. Now, one of us is right and the other is wrong. But Pythagoras thought that the certainty of all numbers being systematically definable was so important that he was willing to kill over a proof that there were numbers that fell between the cracks. Most modern mathmeticians feel the same way, one popularly accepted "proof" that there aren't more irrational numbers than rational numbers basically assumes that irrational numbers do not have the properties that we know them to have. And yet professional mathmeticians tend to subscribe to it, not because they don't know better, but because it is so important that numbers be systematically definable.

Now, the difference is that nobody is getting thrown down a well nowadays for saying that irrational numbers exist and are irrational.

Let's get away from this and consider contraversial things again. What I'm suggesting is that you should develop a genuine appreciation for the tyranny in which you, personally, are an active and willing participant. And I'm not talking about things where you know that you're doing something wrong. I mean things where you think that someone else is wrong and you're acting directly against that person or persons.

Ordinary people let the Holocaust happen because they didn't want to stop it. Now there are varioua reasons for not wanting to stop things. A lot of extraordinary people didn't just stand by and let the Holocaust happen. The Germans in that group didn't have a very good survival rate, the Nazis had many failings, but they were pretty good at counter-insurgency. So the reasons for letting the Holocaust happen range from thinking that it was about time to not wanting to die over it.

The same was probably true of the majority of ordinary Mayans and Aztecs. They probably thought that some of the rituals were a bit excessive. But in a system where fundamental authority is centralized to a great extent, the mere misgivings of the majority don't matter much.

A lot of people were queasy over the judicial orders to starve Terri Schindler to death. Some were sufficiently distressed to suffer a minor arrest while trying to take her food. But how many people charged into the place with serious intent to take her somewhere she could get real medical care, risking getting shot dead for their pains? Since nobody got shot and she didn't get taken out of the custody of her ex, I'd say nobody.

On the other hand, the politicians will have to deal with the fallout from this case, because while very few people were willing to risk much serious inconvenience and nobody was willing to risk death, quite a few ordinary people are going to let this influence their vote one way or another. That fight illustrates the difference between what people wish done and what they are simply unwilling to be shot over.

http://www.rjames.com/Toltec/myth2.htm

Edit: I read it a bit closer, and it looks like you've all got a piece of the story, but not the whole thing. Except that he was a war god, and he didn't oppose sacrifices; he sacrificed all of his uncles on top of a temple by smearing chili peppers on their bodies. Lovely image, don't you think?